And in my own life, in my own small way, I've tried to give back to this country that has given me so much. That's why I left a job at a law firm for a career in public service, working to empower young people to volunteer in their communities. Because I believe that each of us - no matter what our age or background or walk of life - each of us has something to contribute to the life of this nation.

Here's the teaching point, if you're teaching kids about intelligence and policy: Intelligence does not absolve policymakers of responsibility to ask tough questions, and it doesn't absolve them of having curiosity about the consequences of their actions.

George Tenet

It's best to leap into something you know you love. You might change your mind later, but that is the privilege of youth.

Charles Kuralt

Research shows that parents are the single biggest influence on children - if you are worried about your teen and drugs, talk to them.

John Walters

No matter how good you are, there's a lot of luck involved.

Reggie Miller

I get excited about what the Holy Spirit is doing now through all the people he is refining and raising up all over this planet. I love connections and relationship and networking but it must be led by the Spirit.

Daniel Smith

Heredity is what sets the parents of a teenager wondering about each other.

Laurence J. Peter

When I was in the Peace Corps I never made a phone call. I was in Central Africa I didn't make a phone call for two years. I was in Uganda for another four years and I didn't make a phone call. So for six years I didn't make a phone call, but I wrote letters, I wrote short stories, I wrote books.

Paul Theroux

Life is possible only by the deficiencies of our imagination and memory.

Emile M. Cioran

If a thing is free to be good it is also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. A world of automata--of creatures that worked like machines--would hardly be worth creating. The happiness which God designs for His higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other in an ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman on this earth is mere milk and water. And for that they must be free.

C.S. Lewis

Almost every college playwright or sketch or improv comedian was sort of aware of Christopher Durang - even kids in high school. His short plays were so accessible to younger people and I think that was inspirational to me.

Mindy Kaling

I am more and more convinced that our happiness or our unhappiness depends far more on the way we meet the events of life than on the nature of those events themselves.

Wilhelm von Humboldt

If you want to understand today, you have to search yesterday.

Pearl Buck